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Category Archives: old school gaming

Caveat: I’ve never been a big fan of “crafting” in MMOs and the like. The idea of spending hours on a computer game collecting different artifacts to put together something for sale just doesn’t do it for me. That’s why I have a job. That’s why I have hobbies. I don’t want to spend my leisure time “crafting” virtual products for sale. If you are the kind of person who does, you will probably disagree with the assessment in this article.

Recently, over on Google+, I shared a few thoughts with Brian Fitzpatrick on a prospective Alchemist class for old-school D&D. Now first, let me say that Brian is in good company. I’m not sure how many versions of an Alchemist class have been developed for D&D, between retro-clones, heartbreakers, Dragon Magazine, Pathfinder, and unattributed home brews, but I’m sure its up there in the Top 10. He’s not breaking new ground, but he’s not trying to get blood from a stone either.

Once upon a time, I loved the idea of NPC classes. Because more is better, right? In a class-based system, the only way to achieve these expressions of diversity is through new classes. It’s not like a skill or advantage-based system where I can spend a few points and BOOM! I’m an alchemist, bitches!

The trouble is, those sorts of classes don’t really work in an adventure/exploration heavy game like D&D. A character class focused solely on a support role just isn’t going to be fun to play over the long haul by the majority of players. Because they never really get a chance to step into the spotlight when it counts. Sure, I’m sure there are a handful of games that sort of class will fit like a glove, but the traditional “let’s explore” D&D game, not so much.

Besides, the rules already provide guidelines for the creation of potions and alchemical devices by clerics, magic-users and elves (even the other character types too, if the GM is flexible and willing to be extrapolate a bit). This makes perfect sense. After all, if we look at the life and career of Isaac Newton, its reasonable that in a quasi-historical fantasy setting all of these skills would have gone together. A “wizard” would of course be able to cook up alchemical concoctions. That would be assumed in the background and training. So you already have the framework for your adventuring alchemist. You can make it as simple or robust as you need it to be.

So my response to Brian was, rather than a class, why not just come up with a more detailed alchemy service? Because that’s what it really comes down to: service and cost. The party hires an alchemist to keep them afloat in healing potions, greek fire, and (in the case of Brian’s class) keep their magic items charged. That stuff really isn’t the bread and butter of adventuring PCs, so lets mitigate it to a support role. Brian disagrees with me on the merits of the class. Which is fine. As I’ve said, he’s in good company and I’m hardly the final word in game design. His argument is as follows:

…I think the party alchemist, especially in a longer campaign with more spellcasters, could be extremely useful. Perhaps not all the time, but more often than not… Here are a few possibilities.

Imagine having the ability for both a Cleric and an Alchemist to temporarily enchant or improve weapons for the battle at hand

Or recharging an expended magic item at a critical juncture

Or creating a scroll, potion or powder from an unused spell at the end of the day “just in case” the party needs it at a future time

If we make the alchemist at lower levels (1-5) more useful for those three tasks, as well as give them a few additional abilities or spells, I think that would be enough to make this a useful player class.

Sure. Or you could simply tweak the magic item research and fabrication rules as they are and achieve almost the same effect without having to wedge a player into a largely supportive role.

Consider:

Clerics and magic users can already temporarily enhance weapons for the battle at hand without the extra step of alchemy.

The rules already allow this to some degree. Building a class around it is unnecessary.

And that’s really what’s at issue here. Unless alchemy is going to be a big feature of your game (and it could be!), building a class doesn’t really add value to the game. Instead, it provides a character that isn’t as capable as a magic-user or cleric that is focused on downtime activities and with more equipment and resource requirements. See, a magic-user is just as capable whether or not he can find a steady supply of mandrake root to create this or that potion. An alchemist would need to have that same, if not more, utility and versatility.

I’m not saying an adventuring alchemist isn’t a cool idea. But I do think it needs to have a bigger niche than, “you want me to recharge that for ya?”

But I didn’t write this whole thing to shoot down Brian’s hopes and dreams. No, see I want to redirect him a little. Because what I DO NEED, as a DM AND as a player, is a reason to travel 300 miles over land and sea to seek out a MASTER alchemist as opposed to hiring that guy in the base town. And I need a justification as to why that dude charges x10 as much for his services, other than that his calling card reads “Master Alchemist.”

If you look at B/X and AD&D, you’ll see roughly the same thing:

B/X D&D (Expert Rulebook)Alchemist (1000 gp/month):If given the formula or a sample, an alchemist may make a potion at half the normal time and cost. They may also conduct research into different types of potions at twice the cost and time required for a magic-user.

AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide
Alchemist (300 gp/month): This profession handles the compounding of magical substances, and the advantages of employing an alchemist are detailed under the section FABRICATION OF MAGIC ITEMS, Potions. Alchemists will only be found in cities unless you specifically locate one elsewhere. It will require an offer of 10 to 100 gold pieces bonus money, plus a well-stocked laboratory, plus the assurance of not less than a full year of employment, to attract one to service.

There really isn’t anything there that sets one apart from the other. So there is just as much benefit to tracking down the famed Isaac Newton at University in England as dropping into Ted’s Apothecary and Lubricants for all of your alchemical needs. What I’m proposing would serve the game well would be to grade hirelings by degrees of skill (I’d recommend three tiers to avoid getting too granular and keep the book keeping manageable), with different rates and some different capabilities attached. Ted’s A & L might be a great place to go for low level potions. But for the real heavy hitters (like recharging your wand of fireballs or a potion of super heroism), you have to seek out a Master. And I think it would be worthwhile to do this across the board. There should be a difference between hiring the Black Company and Wallace’s Band of Ne’er-do-Wells. And there really is no guidance on how to do it right now.

I’m going to come back to this eventually on my own, but I suspect someone just as smart and twice as dedicated has already beaten me to the punch on this one. And if not, someone needs to. In the meantime, don’t give up hope on your Alchemist class, Brian. I hear the one in the Arcanum is a fantastic starting point!

In case anyone has been wondering where I’ve been the past two weeks, I’m still here. I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth or climb into a devil-faced sphere of annihilation. Far worse actually. John Wick and Co. dropped a PDF preview of the new 7th Sea core book in the inboxes of over 11,000 people. We immediately began combing through it looking for…anything and everything. Together, we provided enough feedback that they delayed printing by a week so that we could provide even more feedback. Now, the books are off to press, the proofs are being reviewed, and we are all waiting patiently for the final draft of the PDF to be released so we can go wild with it.

In the meantime, due to a night of unusual absentee-ism in my Witch Hunter game, I took them for a spin through the B/X D&D Dungeon I’ve been running for the kids in my library program. And fun was had by all. A surprising amount of it. Which brings me to the topic at hand.

The intoxicating lure of simplicity.

For about the past decade, the two games I’ve run – almost exclusively – have been Savage Worlds and Witch Hunter. Both are great games and a lot of fun. But, as simple as their core mechanics are, both games have a lot of moving parts. Between Talents and Edges, Stances and Maneuvers, Power Points and Strain, Hero Points and Bennies, there is a surprising amount to keep track of. I’m not sure why, but when you compare it to the regimented ease of B/X D&D, both games feel clunky by comparison.

After the last game session in the teen program, where we managed to spend an hour drafting an adventure and only played an hour and a half of real action, things moved steadily and quickly. Combat zipped along at an average of 2-3 rounds each. Even with a large group of players (upwards of 12 on some nights), it never feels like it bogs down the way WH and SW can.

I feel like I’ve forgotten how liberating running a truly rules-lite game can be. The last game I ran that felt this easy-breezy was SAGA (Dragonlance 5th Age). A lot of this has to do with how the game works on the GM side, I believe. It’s very regimented. Party goes in a room with a trap? Roll a couple of d6s and look for 1s or 2s. Party encounters a monster? Roll a pair of d6s to check for surprise. Then 2 more for Reactions. If things go poorly, 2 more for initiative and just start going around the table.

7th Sea promises to be equally as easy. At its core, its a resource management game where the players much chose how they spend their resources to further the story. But despite the simplicity of the core mechanic, the game offers a very robust menu of character options. Players choose two backgrounds (each with a different means of gaining Hero Points, a secondary resource), two Arcana (more Hero Points), and up to five Advantages (ways to spend those Hero Points). This makes for a lot of options on the player’s part, which eats up game time. Meanwhile, with B/X D&D, when a player poses a task outside the parameters of their class, the GM has three simple ways to solve it: say “yes” or “no”, give them a Saving Throw (or maybe an Ability roll if you’re just not feeling the old school love), or roll a d6 and look for 1s or 2s. You might be generous and apply their Ability bonus to the roll. Taking some of that dice rolling out of the players hands seems to speed the game up – or perhaps it just makes the GM busier so it just feels that way.

All this has left me with the crazy desire to put together a B/X pastiche for handling swashbuckling adventure. To take a retro-clone (probably Lamentations of the Flame Princess) and mix in aspects of 7th Sea (all three editions, including d20), Flashing Blades, Honor+Intrigue, and Witch Hunter for the perfect witches brew of rules-light swashbuckling, monster hunting, and exploration. Which is hilarious, mostly because I have no time for such an endeavor. But there is something very satisfying about the idea of a complete swashbuckling game in only 64 pages.

And yes, I am aware of Simon Washbourne’s Sabres and Witchery. A good start, but only about 1/3 of the equation.

I’ll be posting my thoughts about the new edition of 7th Sea in short order now that I’ve had the time to review the full scope of the rules. But for those of you who can’t wait, here is what some others have had to say on them:

Also, I already have a few tools ready to go up on the Downloads page when the final PDF drops. Stay tuned.

Lastly, a word about the summer schedule. I don’t know about you, but my summer schedule becomes a busy time. The kids are out of school. The wife is out of school. Honey-dos and playdates fly left and right. Its bedlam. So I expect to be a little bit slow in posting stuff until mid-August. Until then, I’m shooting for one good post a week. Let’s see if I can keep up that pace.

What some of you may not know is that for the last 8 years I’ve been running a roleplaying game for teens at the Lewisville Public Library. For almost all of that time, I’ve used Savage Worlds as the ruleset. It’s fast, furious, and fun…well, fun anyway — name me a system that doesn’t bog down when you have 12 players of varying experience at the table. But this year we are doing something different. When I put it to a vote, the players almost unanimously voted for an old school dungeoncrawl. Personally, I was pitching the new Rippers: Resurrected book, but I was out-voted. Now, Savage Worlds does fantasy very well. But for weird, old school mega-dungeon style adventure, there is just no beating the original (ok, maybe Dungeonslayers, but I already own enough D&D material to choke a horse, so lets use it!).

So as I set to work on my not-so-mega-megadungeon, I’ve started working on tools for me and the players to make our lives easier. The first three are no available on the Downloads page.

The Marching Order sheet allows a player or GM to keep track of the party’s formation. It’s designed for large parties (up to 30 individuals, 3 abreast). You’ll want to laminate this and use dry erase or water-based markers.

The Time Tracker allows a player or GM to keep track of rounds, turns, and hours spent creeping about in the dungeon. It includes some handy time-reference tools to keep rulebook referencing to a minimum.

The Notebook Reference is based on one of my favorite Witch Hunter GM tools. Designed to work with a standard Composition Notebook (9.75 x 7.5 inches), just print it on full page label paper and affix it to the inside of each cover. It’s one part DM reference and one part idea generator. I’ve incorporated a couple of handy tables from the 1st edition and 5th edition DMGs as well.

Wait! What? #6? Where did this come from? Where are 1–5? Sorry, folks. I’m late to the party on this one. It has not escaped my notice that, despite my focus on whatever I’m playing at the moment, the most popular posts on this blog have been pretty game agnostic. So I’m only happy to spout off more about GMing. I’ve been doing it for long enough, I should have SOMETHING to say about it. So I fell in behind this blog caravan a bit after it began. I may go back and revisit the earlier topics, but for now upwards and onwards!

Many of us probably remember the AD&D days when the DM could roll a black dragon on the random encounter table and end a low-level party’s career. The 3rd and 4th editions of the game led some newer players to believe that every encounter should be defeatable and appropriate to their level and capabilities. However, 5th edition has moved away from this structure.

We see this mirrored in other games as well. At one end of the spectrum is the style and belief that the PCs should be able to overcome any challenge that comes their way, that challenges should be “appropriate”. On the other end of the spectrum is the style and belief that the world should be realistic, that every fight shouldn’t be able to be won, and that one of the requisite skills of the game is knowing when to fight and when to run.

Where do you, as a GM, fall on this spectrum, and why? Should the PCs always be able to win?

So where to begin?

First of all, of course there needs to be a chance of failure. There is a reason they are called GAMES. A roleplaying GAME without chance is a terribly boring, pretentious affair. Some people may liken it to playing a computer game with a cheat code. But those who do that get off on the CHEATING aspect. Tabletop RPG’s don’t offer that sort of satisfaction. So a chance of failure needs to the there. Its a vital component for creating tension and excitement in play.

Now all that said, there are a few circumstances in which that chance of failure can make the play experience tedious and frustrating to players and GM alike:

When failure brings the game to a screeching halt.

When failure takes someone out of the game completely.

When there is no room for alternative approaches to the problem.

When failure is…lame!

Let’s address these one at a time, shall we?

1) When failure brings the game to a screeching halt
Progress in play should never be tied to a single die roll. Not only is this poor design, its poor GMing on top of that. This is one of the things that makes running a traditional “mystery” so difficult with RPGs. I heartedly subscribe to the GUMSHOE philosophy that the first clue should always be free. Success with the dice brings additional information. Failure should have the consequence of raising the stakes, heightening the tension. Failure should say, not this way, try something else.

2) When failure takes someone out of the game completely
Anything that drops a single character from play for the rest of the session is a big no-no in my book. I’ve been guilty of it plenty of times, don’t get me wrong. Kidnapping the character of an obnoxious player to serve as a sacrifice for an evil cult, trapping a character in an impenetrable bubble at the bottom of a lake. Just because you do it doesn’t make it a good practice. This goes double with character death, especially if you are playing a RPG with complex character generation rules (GURPS, for instance).

3) When there no room for alternative approaches to the problem
As I said in #1, failure shouldn’t be a dead end. If you can’t pick the lock, you should be able to try and kick it down. Can’t charm or cajole the information from a captive or informant, you can always try interrogation. Failure with no alternative means of redress is no better than failure that stops the game cold. Of course, as GM, it isn’t your responsibility to spell out the players’ options for them. Let them do the work. If they come out with something cool and outside the box, reward it with a hero point, a benny, or an XP bonus.

4) When failure is LAME
And by that I mean when failure adds NOTHING to the experience. It adds nothing to the narrative, doesn’t add tension or raise the stakes, doesn’t even offer a moment of levity other than, “What are the f**king odds?!?!” Think of it like that last hurdle in a side-scrolling video game just before the boss where you always seem to hurtle off the ledge because your timing is just a bit off. LAME! Usually, lame fails come from things that shouldn’t even require a die roll. Think about it. Which of these scenarios sound better:

“You struggle to climb the 15 foot stone wall. After a few tumbles you make it over. Take 3 points of damage for your trouble.”

Every repeated roll costs you time you could be doing something else. And wouldn’t you rather your players be duking it out with that ogre horde in the next valley than trying to catch and skin rabbits to offset their provisions? Sometimes it’s better to either let the players win, or let them succeed with consequences. It’s the whole “yes, and…” / “yes, but…” approach to GMing.

Ok. Right. Right. Yes. Success. Failure. Yadda yadda. Get to the question, Mr. GM! Should challenges be measured against the party’s capabilities or not?

Don’t hate me, but when it comes to combat encounters, my answer is, “it depends.” I hate to admit but I’m a soft touch. I’m the sort of GM who will dial down an encounter on the fly if the players are having a rough go for no other reason than the dice aren’t going their way that night. I’m a lamb in wolf’s clothing. I am ashamed.

But hey, that’s for set piece encounters. Plus, remember Rule of Fail #2: Avoid failures that take people completely out of the game. And character death does that. It’s one thing when you are playing B/X D&D or Savage Worlds where a player can whip up a new character in minutes and jump back in. Any game where chargen takes a considerable time investment (say, like, Witch Hunter!), you should be conscious of character death. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, but when it does it should be memorable! I have an unspoken rule in my games: character death should be spectacular! It should be an event!

No one complains when Lucifer shows up, rips the paladin’s beating heart from her chest and uses it as a grisly prop for a Shakespearean soliloquy.

Everyone complains when a scraggly band of goblins delivers a TPK.

Guess which one I’m more likely to cheat in favor of my players on? Does it cheapen their experience? Not that I can tell. This is why I like games with minion rules.

Now I’m more than happy to give my players all the rope they need to hang themselves with. The initial premise mentioned the random encounter with a black dragon. The players are 1st level. Sure, why not! As long as they don’t have to fight it (Rule #3), I’m perfectly happy to throw that at them. Let’s see what they do with it. Run away. Evade. Distract it. Parlay. These are all perfectly acceptable alternatives to a face to face confrontation.

Presenting an insurmountable challenge to the players does not make a bad GM. Demanding that they approach that challenge in the most disadvantaged way to be sacrificed on a capricious whim to fuel the GM’s ego is (damn, was that purple enough?). That breaks every single rule. I WANT my players to approach things with outside of the box thinking. If they do something stupid, that has consequences too. But I find that the people I play with are smart enough to rise to the challenge, and there is no shame in running away (or coming back with reinforcements).

So if they choose to fight fight that dragon on its own turf, on its own terms…well…sometimes Darwin wins.

But to measure every encounter against the PCs’ capabilities in some tedious game of resource management? Where is the fun and excitement in that?

That soft touch thing? I’m working on it.

All of this applies apply to my style of GMing, which is a witch’s brew of sandbox and matrix/funnel design. And there are always exceptions to these rules. Not all of them apply 100% of the time. However, upon reflection, I just find that when I don’t apply these points, the game suffers for it more than not. It doesn’t go off the rails or anything, but the player experience is rougher than I prefer. And, as a GM, player experience means everything to me.

Here’s a handy table to use when your players go hiring courtiers to ferry messages around town.

2d10

Result

2

It’s Complicated: Roll twice, ignore this result again.

3

Played for Fools! The message courier is actually in league with enemies of the PCs or recipient. The message is altered to suit the whims and designs of these enemies.

4

Intercepted! The message never makes it to the intended recipient; it has been intercepted by enemies of the PCs or the recipient.

5

Bad Choice: The courier hired to deliver the message is completely unreliable. Hours later, he is found drunk in a local tavern and has lost the message. Roll again and reduce the result by half (a roll of 10 would be 5, etc.),

6

Waylaid: The message courier is waylaid by an agent unrelated to the messaging parties. It does not reach the intended recipient.

7

Blocked: An event or problem prevents the message from ever reaching the recipient.

8

Mystery: The message reaches the recipient with no complications. An unrelated third party has somehow learned the contents of the message through secret means and uses that information to further its own agenda.

9–10

Delay: A unexpected problem arises; the message takes twice as long as expected to reach the intended recipient.

11–12

Issues: An unexpected complication delays delivery of the message, which arrives slightly later than expected.

Over on the Kobold Press blog, they recently published an article, Steely Gaze and Lethal Blows, about injecting pulp-style combat into Pathfinder and DnD. While an interesting concept, what really struck me was a quote from the old 1980’s Conan movie:

“In time, his victories could not easily be counted… he was taken to the east, a great prize, where the war masters would teach him the deepest secrets.”

One of the continuous themes I read about with old school games is how they push exploration and discovery in the milieu. And while modern games don’t prohibit this, most kneecap it by front-loading all the rules and capabilities for the players’ eyes. Pretty much every system that offers a scheme of advantages/disadvantages, or exception-based rules, does this. If I create a character in one of these systems, I know everything my character will ever be capable of. I know how to qualify for the highest ranking Feats, what a master of my fighting style is capable of,

Nothing is held back. It’s all there in menu format for the players to pick and choose from, to plan out their characters’ fortune. And the only hurdle in their way is a list of prerequisites or requirements.

Hooray for player empowerment!

But its entirely at the cost of discovery and mystery. Boo for GM world building!

What if every character capability wasn’t available for you to examine from the start? What if the Feats, Advantages, Edges, Talents, even Skills and Specializations available to your character at any given time were entirely dependent on where your character is in the campaign world?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thought about Fighting Traditions in Witch Hunter, so let’s look through that lense. In 1689/90, the city of Frankfurt hosted three swordsman guilds: The Brotherhood of St. Mark (Marxbruder), Federfetcher, and the Brotherhood of St. Luke (which was not a formally recognized guild and is described as a society of hooligans). Now, lets say Marxbruder and Federfetcher both cover the same Fighting Tradition, but each offer a different assortment of fighting styles (talents) a member might choose to advance in. Want to know what those are? Join the guild! They’ll be happy to tell you…then.

Oh, you want them to divulge their secrets before you sign on the dotted line? Sorry, Charlie.

Bottomline: There should be benefits and rewards to exploring the game world.

But what if I make the wrong choice? There’s a wrong choice? How would you know? Why would you know?

But what if I want a style the guild doesn’t offer? Easy. Either resign your membership and join another guild…and face the consequences of doing so. Or leave town and seek out another guild, or better yet a master in the tradition, who can teach you this technique.

Where can I find this guy? Ask around. Follow leads. Travel. Talk. Explore the world around you!

In one of the first continuous campaigns I played in, magic fluctuated on a geographic basis. So when the party mage got himself killed, the rest of us traveled half way across the continent to have him raised. Was it convenient? No. Was travel hand waved? Hell no! Was it fun and rewarding? Hell yes!

We’ve been doing this with magic in our games forEVER. The mage finds a cool tome in the library of Alexandria and now has the chance to learn a couple of new spells, some the player knows about and some that are completely new. Why should talents, feats, edges, fighting styles, and even skills be any different?

So how can I implement this in my own game? Well, for one thing, when that shiny new supplement rolls out on the treadmill, don’t allow it. Oh, the players can read it all they want, but none of it is available to them. No, carefully go through all the new abilities and make them available on a case-by-case basis. A retired adventurer in the village of Hommlet can teach you an assortment of Knacks, or a Feat.

Wait? Training?! GROAN!!! There’s no reason training in any game system needs to mirror the old AD&D training system. That system was put in place to siphon off the vast treasure characters were amassing and assumed that players had multiple characters active in the game world at any given time (time keeping). In a game like Witch Hunter, the orders would have access to masters and trainers, so gaining access is more a matter of geography than finances. And time? If the game assumes combing through a library looking for some odd detail on an obscure line of supernatural beastie, then why would we then assume it takes more than a week (downtime) to master a fighting style or Talent?

A week of downtime? GROAN!!! Ok, you need more incentive. How about this, while training costs time and/or money, what if it also lowered SP costs? Say – to pull a number out of the air – by 0.6. This reduces the cost of a basic Talent in Witch Hunter to 30 SP, the cost of a skill specialization. A Greater Talent would cost 45 SP, and a Heroic 60 (that’s a 30 point discount!). Now before you think I’ve lost my mind, not all Talents would be available for this sort of treatment. Maybe 2 or 3 in any particular location. And the ones that are available don’t need to be advertised. There’s no bulletin in the town square that reads, “looking for a good deal on Talents?” Think of them more like easter eggs embedded in the game world.

And what are the rest of the players suppose to do while my character is learning the finer aspects of Incredible Reflexes? What else? Find nasty evil stuff that’s going on around them to eliminate. What? You guys aren’t good enough to find a witch in all of Copenhagen?